This site is intended to continue support for the legacy 2.x line of the phpBB2 bulletin board package. If you are a fan of phpBB2, please, by all means register, post, and help us out by offering your suggestions. We are primarily a community and support network. Our secondary goal is to provide a phpBB2 MOD Author and Styles area.

Mmm, yeah, good point, Daz. It's easy enough to make a standard. Another story getting people to follow it.

Some kind of checks by the system would also be a good idea. There are a couple of points at which such checks might be run. At the installation of a style and at the install/activation of a module. I'll definitely keep that in mind. Thanks.

dogs and things: despite any input being good, it is now too late for why fork? – it simply serves no purpose in this thread. I think atleast I and Murmur are now starting with the assumption that there is a fork and it makes no sense to pull it down even before it has really started to live. If you want to throw critique on any forks, there is a proper fork discussion thread.

We need time and a chance to succeed. Also please note I haven't been able to contact Murmur because there is no PM system here, until he posts something I don't know what he really thinks at this point.

i do not think it is too late to ask "why fork", as long as you read this question in a certain way.
what i mean is, do not read the "why" as in "whether you want to do it at all" - you are already decided about wanting to do it.
read the "why" as in: "what are the objectives of your fork"?

i think that's make perfect sense.
let's be honest: the code base of phpbb2 is not exactly high quality. so the reason for keeping it alive is not to preserve the intrinsic value of the code itself.
why then?
the only good answer i can come up with is:
"because people have developed some awesome add-ons over the years, and we want a system that will keep them useful".
so, when looking at it this way, some design considerations become clear.
for instance, when talking about revamping the template system, it only makes sense if you do it *while keeping the syntax of existing system*.
in other words, make any changes you want to the template *engine*, but as soon as existing .tpl files stop working, it means you can't use exiting styles. at this point your fork becomes worthless (IMO, of course).
at the same time, it should be perfectly fine to *expand* the syntax, as long as most styles still work.
if you consider breaking special cases (extreme style, which is more a MOD than a style), then you have to ask yourself: how much *other stuff* depends on it? in this example, how many styles depend on extreme style?

so, in order to make sense, you have to declare and understand the reason for your fork. what are the intentions WRT compatibility with existing MODs, styles and translations?

i am not saying it is imperative to keep absolutely everything compatible.

however, declaring up front what is the expected compatibility level should come *before* discussing the actual design details.

for instance, if i understood correctly what Merri was saying WRT new template system, this would mean rendering existing styles unusable with the fork. if my understanding is correct then i think that such a fork would be useless.

so my point is: yes, you do have to answer the question "why fork", not as a yes/no question; understanding exactly the motivation would provide an answer to many design questions.

I am still (slowly) working on a fork. I have let the website expire because - as the only one working on the project -- it seemed a waste of money. The SVN at googlecode is still good ... though I haven't uploaded changes recently.

I wish I had more time to devote to it. There are BIG ideas in the project - even cutting edge ones - that are exciting to think about. But implementation is slow.

If any one is interested in looking at the project goals and needs, feel free to email me.

I'm bumping this and almost-self-plugging here, but I just want to say a word about Icy Phoenix, which is basically a phpbb2 premod, that's taken a few improvements from phpBB3's codebase (sql stuff and others), and has a plugin system (though not yet as easy to add your stuff as 3.1's... But at least it's cleaner than their extract/compact...).
It's still quite fast, and it's still possible to install phpBB2 mods, as I've done for example with AD&R (the phpBB2 RPG), medal mod and others (you just need to replace a few $phpEx and $phpbb_root_path ...).

(actually, the ADR version is modded a lot, based on ShadowTek's 0.3.4's ADR premod+upgrades+lots of mods)